{"id":2715,"date":"2020-05-10T07:30:00","date_gmt":"2020-05-10T11:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/2020\/05\/fluid-questioning\/"},"modified":"2020-05-10T07:30:00","modified_gmt":"2020-05-10T11:30:00","slug":"fluid-questioning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/2020\/05\/fluid-questioning\/","title":{"rendered":"Fluid Questioning"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Songwriter Andrew Bird on how he writes a song:<\/p>\n<p><em>It\u2019s kind of a racket. When I step onstage I feel myself adopting that comedian\u2019s posture, a shrug of the shoulders that says, \u201cI don\u2019t know, folks. We\u2019re all just puzzling through it together. I\u2019m not going to pretend to have the answers but here\u2019s what I\u2019ve seen.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>To emerge from creative hibernation with my perfect oeuvre and worldview fully realized feels stifling and boring. And while I\u2019m anything but an exhibitionist I have this perverse impulse to introduce half-written songs and invite the trouble that it might bring. Maybe I\u2019m saying to my former teachers, \u201cLook, by your standards I\u2019m failing, but it feels great.\u201d But mostly it\u2019s that I just prefer a fluid questioning present to a fixed past.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>[<a href=\"http:\/\/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com\/2013\/08\/30\/puzzling-through-a-love-song\/\">via<\/a>]<\/p>\n<div class=\"tpad-img-center\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/6a01156f6c1fc1970b0263e946de4d200b-800wi\/\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"058\" class=\"asset  asset-image at-xid-6a01156f6c1fc1970b0263e946de4d200b img-responsive\" src=\"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/6a01156f6c1fc1970b0263e946de4d200b-500wi.jpg\" title=\"058\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Songwriter Andrew Bird on how he writes a song: It\u2019s kind of a racket. When I step onstage I feel myself adopting that comedian\u2019s posture, a shrug of the shoulders that says, \u201cI don\u2019t know, folks. We\u2019re all just puzzling through it together. I\u2019m not going to pretend to have the answers but here\u2019s what [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2715\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mohonkimages.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}